All i wanna see is black people playing chess, and not tic-tac-toe.

Actually Ms. Atlien, Margaret Sanger is the mother of family planning and birth control. If you do further research you’ll realize that pro-lifers (black and white) have tried to use her as a lightening rod regarding abortion. Actually Ms. Sanger did not believe in abortion she believed in women taking the decision of whether or not to have children into their own hands by the use of “family planning”. She was instrumental in inventing the Pill. She believed “that in order for women to have more “equal footing” in society and to have physically and mentally healthy lives, they needed to be able to decide when a pregnancy would be most convenient for themselves. In addition, access to birth control would also fulfill a critical psychological need by allowing women to be able to fully enjoy sexual relations, without being burdened by the fear of pregnancy” The controversy around her is that she believed in a concept called negative eugenics, “a social philosophy which claims that human hereditary traits can be improved through social intervention. Sanger’s eugenic policies ran to an exclusionary immigration policy, free access to birth control methods and full family-planning autonomy for the able-minded, and segregation or sterilization for the profoundly retarded.” However she DID NOT believe in other forms of intervention like sterilization, eugenics or selective breeding. Which would include abortion.” She believed strictly that the use of BIRTH CONTROL would help society and women with some of the issues affecting it. Now I’m not saying all her beliefs i.e. sterilization of the profoundly retarded are acceptable but she did not have any “Negro Project”. That is made up by pro-lifers because she was the first one to advocate planned parenthood in poor communities including black communities. And planned parenthood is one of the few places a woman can still get a legal abortion.

These billboards are scare tactics. If you really care about our community than lets have honest dialogue about why black woman are not effectively using birth control and are continuing to bring little one’s into this world with out any means or support to raise them. Or dialogue about how we can handle some of the issues in our community and support the children who are already here. Do they list the number of black children who are put into the foster care system and NEVER adopted out? Or the number of young black men and women who end up in our penal system due to the lack of parental guidance and love? The number of young black children committing suicide? The lack of education of our children and steady decline we’ve made in that arena so that they are not prepared for the future. Having a family means being able to care for them financially, mentally, psychologically, emotionally and physically. A lot of us as black people are not ready to “birth no babies”

Though I think it’s a woman’s choice and no one else’s, I do ask the question why not handle that BEFORE hand as opposed to after the fact? No one is saying you can’t sleep with Tyrone just do you need to get pregnant by him. The simple answer is NO. Margaret Sanger worked hard for women not to have to get pregnant by advocating and inventing of birth control for us. The least we can do is use them.

Sorry for being long winded but I just wanted to add another piece of the puzzle to the equation. :O)